Louise Rafkin - Writing Sample

Business Lunch With Nell Merlino

Nell Merlino is an ace at taking difficult social issues and turning them into public-information campaigns. She successfully designed and oversaw the launch of the Ms. Foundation for Women's Take Your Daughter to Work Day. She orchestrated the 20th Anniversary of Earth Day. And the NGO Forum on Women which took place in Beijing in 1995, was her project too.

Merlino, 46, now runs a consulting firm, Strategy Communication Action, Ltd., from her New York City loft. While she still works with corporate clients, she is focused on a new national non-profit organization, Count Me In For Women's Economic Independence.

Her new organization, co-founded with Iris Burnett, a former chief of staff at the U.S. Information Agency, is aimed at raising money to fund women who are starting or expanding underfinanced businesses. Merlino predicts the campaign, which launches in April, will raise $25 million the first month. But the bucks won't come from big corporate donations: instead the campaign is asking for just $5 from thousands of individual women who want to be part of the campaign.

So how will this new project work?

Our massive grassroots outreach will ask and inspire every woman in America to contribute a minimum of five dollars. For the first time, women will be creating their own source of money. We plan to make small business loans of five hundred to ten thousand dollars for start up costs, inventory or equipment, as well as provide educational stipends and scholarships for business training and technical assistance. Traditionally, women have often been excluded from traditional funding sources -- due to change in marital status or lack of credit history -- as well as other reasons.

How will you raise the money?

Much of the campaign will happen online, but we're working with banks and other institutions to make it really easy to donate. We're going to capitalize on reaching women's groups -- church groups, book groups, investment clubs, day-care mothers, online communities. Women know how to solve community problems, we usually get together and have bake sale or a car wash, this is just going to be on a much larger scale.

Why are you asking for such small amounts, just $5, from so many individuals, instead of just getting it from the big corporate donations?

We are asking for small contributions to create the loan, education and scholarship fund so all women can be a part of Count Me In. So that all women can be part of creating opportunity and creating our own equality. We will accept larger contributions from individuals and corporations with the understanding that all contributors are equally valuable to the creation of the fund.

But corporations, particularly American Express Small Business Services and American Express Foundation have been extremely generous with contributions to our start up.

How will you distribute funds?

We will become the first online micro-lenders in the world. We are committed to designing credit scoring applications that reflect the realities of women's lives. There are laws on the books that say we, as consumers, should be able to access business credit, but we often aren't able.

So why are you doing your own scoring and distribution, instead of letting a regular financial institution handle it?

The Count Me In credit scoring system will be unique to our organization and will take into account all that we know about women and women business owners.

To design our online review process, we are taking the principles of credit scoring and are adding an additional set of questions to complement the traditional questions asked. For example, we will ask about experience in the product or service area; family members in business, how long applicants have been selling their product or service, and what the goals for the business are, etc. We are adding about 15 new questions to count toward the decision.

Women want to know why they get rejected for a loan if they do. Women want to understand failure as well as success. Women want the opportunity to go to a female friendly place to borrow money --that is, not their husband, father, brother or boss. Not that women don't appreciate the help they get from their families -- they just want to be independent and do business on their own two feet. That is some of what the focus groups told us (before the group was launched).

How does a woman get a Count Me In loan?

Individuals apply for a loan by completing an application online or by sending their information to Count Me In by fax or mail.

In the first year of lending the largest loan will be $10,000. The amounts and the number of loans we distribute depends directly on how much money we collect from women and men across the country.

There is no limit to the number of loans you can get from Count Me In. But you can only have one loan at a time and you can not get a second loan until you pay back the first loan etc. It is our hope and plan that women who successfully payback a Count Me In loan will eventually be able to go to a commercial financial institution for larger loans.

What do you see as your personal challenges in this undertaking?

This is about moving forward, not going back to the same well but creating a new well. I think women are ready for an organization that speaks to issues of how money works in their lives and shows them how they can work together to accomplish these goals.

How do you keep going, what fuels your political passion?

Success and challenge. Watching what happened with Take Our Daughters to Work Day, and seeing the results of that campaign, how millions of girls have been changed by that opportunity, that keeps me going. There are real opportunities out there for women and we can look to each other to keep our dreams going.

How did you get where you are?

Certainly by believing I wasn't very different from anyone else, that the things that concerned me and challenged me were similar to what concerned others, particularly other women.

I attended Antioch College. My first jobs out of college were in the labor movement organizing women who were working for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers and the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees. I then received a Fulbright Scholarship to England where I studied labor relations in the British National Health Service.

I returned from England, spent ten years working in two state governments (NJ & NY) in health and human services and national politics. I worked for the presidential campaigns of both Mondale and Dukakis, and then started my communications business at the end of the Dukakis campaign. That's when I undertook the Take Our Daughters to Work Day etc. I started Count Me In two years ago with Iris.

Do you think Americans are less active in public campaigns, or more willing now to engage in these kind of issues?

In a Roper Starch survey conducted in 1994, 48 million Americans claim to know about Take Our Daughters to Work Day and 15.4 million claim to have actually taken their daughter to work. People participate in campaigns and initiatives that make sense to them, that speak to issues they care about. I do not necessarily think that means people are "joiners". People act in their own self interest -- if campaigns speak to them, people will participate. The public movement against tobacco companies and smoking is another good example of how people are involved in issues that make sense to them.

If you could invite any three people to lunch who would you invite?

First, Galileo because as a Catholic girl, he was the first person I discovered to challenge the teachings of the church. Also, the painter Mary Casset who was so alone in her life, only having contact with male painters. And then, Maya Lin, the women who created the Vietnam War memorial -- which I think shows a brilliant understanding of war and loss.

How can women participate in Count Me In?

Come find us at http://www.count-me-in.org/ or send us an email at info@count-me-in.org.